At Cape Noshappu (野寒布岬 / not to be confused with Cape Nosappu, which I had visited a couple of weeks previously), I bought presents for Mrs M and the in-laws, in the shape of tarako (鱈子 / cod roe) and ikura (salmon roe), which would wing their way to Ibaraki via that most Japanese of conveniences, kuuru-bin (クール便 / refrigerated postage). In the UK, for a parcel of any kind to reach its destination - let alone in one piece - is a minor miracle, whereas here you can quite literally send a single choc ice from one end of the country to the other, with a guarantee that it will still be shrink-wrapped and frozen when it gets there.

From Noshappu I continued south for what was, along with the road between Akkeshi and Nemuro in the far east of Hokkaido, one of the most glorious days' riding of the summer.

The coast road makes its way through the Sarobetsu Wetlands National Park, although an equally important reason for my enjoyment was the strong following wind, which propelled me effortlessly along as a succession of grimacing cyclists passed by on the opposite side of the road, each battling against the headwind and no doubt feeling as exhausted and thoroughly pissed off as I had on the previous day's slog to Cape Sohya.

One such unfortunate was Mr Small River, who I met at a roadside café. Mr Small River worked for a saké company in Osaka, and despite looking a good ten years younger than me, revealed that this was his thirtieth time in Hokkaido. He had previously come here by both car and motorbike, and I sensed that he wasn't yet a cycling veteran, as despite his struggle with the wind being made easier by a super-lightweight racing bike (pictured), it was simultaneously made more difficult by the enormous rucksack (not pictured) he was shouldering as he rode it.

...and just as photogenic from the front as from the back (note the mini-Anpanman figurines either side of the bumper).

The island of Rishiri (利尻島 / literally 'Profitable Buttocks Island' - yes, your guess is as good as mine) lies about fifteen kilometres off the coast, and if my memory serves me correctly is the setting for the rather downbeat ending to Will Ferguson's excellent travel book Hokkaido Highway Blues.

Rishirisan (利尻山), the 1721-metre-high peak that dominates the island, is - like pretty much any mountain in Japan with a volcano-like profile - known colloquially as Rishiri-fuji for its supposed resemblance to Mount Fuji, and as the sun set, several amateur photographers - including yours truly - could be seen rushing around a patch of waste ground near Teshio harbour, each of us looking for the ideal angle from which to capture the scene.

Up here in the far north of Hokkaido, Hamatonbetsu was like a frontier town, and in a spooky, slightly Lynchian kind of way, all six sets of traffic lights along its dead straight and practically deserted main street were synchronised to change from red to green and back again at precisely the same time.

'There's no crime around here,' said the manager as I was checking out of his business hotel, 'just car crashes.' And indeed, there was a sign outside the police station detailing the number of days since the last fatal accident, something I had only previously seen on an oil rig in the North Sea.

As I made my way north along Route 238, a bank of black cloud rolled by in the opposite direction, carrying in its wake a brisk headwind that seemed to grow in intensity as the day progressed.

Riding into a high wind is infinitely harder than riding up a steep hill, for while the effort involved is approximately the same, the nature of that effort is different. In both cases, you use a low gear and sometimes have to stand up on the pedals to give yourself extra leverage, but while the meditative quality of a climb makes it pleasurable, working against the wind is supremely frustrating. Why, one thinks as one struggles onwards, head down and teeth gritted, should it be such a challenge to ride along a flat road on a fine day? On a climb, while your muscles may be straining, your surroundings are calm. Against a headwind, however, there is no escape: your ears ring with white noise and your body is pummelled as if by an invisible adversary - it feels, in fact, a little like those nightmares in which you are trying to run away from someone but can't.

Whenever I stopped to eat, to rest or to pee, I had to hide behind the nearest wall or building just to give myself some respite from the onslaught, and as you can see, out in the open I couldn't even keep my camera straight to take a photo.

Simply because they provided some shelter, a line of hills along the way came as blessed relief, but on the downhill stretch of each, the wind was so strong that if I stopped pedalling I would remain - as if on an exercise bike - rooted to the spot.

Cape Sohya - the northernmost point in Japan - was the fourth extremity on my circumnavigation of Hokkaido, and from it the Russian island of Sakhalin is just about visible forty kilometres away.

Instead of being elated at the achievement of having reached Sohya, though, I was almost delirious with exhaustion, and even here - especially here, in fact - the wind was relentless. After taking a couple of commemorative photos and cowering behind a public toilet to eat my lunch, I set off again as soon as I could, and the contrast between cycling north into a headwind and south with a tailwind couldn't have been greater

Having covered the previous sixty kilometres in six hours, it took just an hour to cover the thirty to Wakkanai Town, and along the way I passed - surprise, surprise - the biggest wind farm in Japan.

As the sun set in the west so the moon appeared in the east...

...and I arrived at Midori-no-yu, which at first seemed like just another rider house: a woman at the reception desk sat silently watching the Olympics on TV, there was a bucket full of fag ends in one corner of the common room, and the adjoining sento was even more basic and old fashioned than the one I had been to in Asahikawa.

I was on the verge of heading into Wakkanai for dinner when I got talking to one of the other guests, a student from Kumamoto who had taken five days to get here using his juh-hachi-kippu - ie. by local trains from Kyushu at the opposite end of the country - and had until the end of September to cycle all the way back (his bike and baggage had arrived in Hokkaido by post). As we were talking, the woman at reception - who the other guests referred to as okah-san (mum) - turned off the house lights, started up a mirror ball that hung from the ceiling, picked up a microphone and, her voice drenched in karaoké-style reverb, began to speak.

'Good evening everyone and welcome to Midori-no-yu,' she said. 'Unfortunately, last year our amplifier broke down, so tonight we'll only be able to sing one song together. As usual there is all-you-can-drink shoh-chu (焼酎 / a cheap, vodka-like spirit made from wheat or potatoes), and if you feel sick at any time, there are toilets here' - at this point she gestured with her hands like an air stewardess indicating the emergency exits - 'and here. The ones at closest to reception are better for number ones. For number twos, I would recommend the ones at the far end of the room. Now, if everyone would like to stand up and join hands, let's sing!'

After a rousing - although not altogether tuneful - rendition of a song called Sakura (桜 / cherry blossom - actually there are several famous Japanese songs called Sakura, and I couldn't tell you for sure exactly which one we sang), the microphone was passed around and we introduced ourselves one by one. Due to the loud grinding noise emanating from an ice-making machine in the corner of the room, I didn't catch everything of what was said, but there follows a selection of the more memorable introductions:'This is my second time in Hokkaido. The first time was with my girlfriend, but she dumped me in April so this time I'm here on my own.''I had a crash yesterday and today is my first day on a rental bike.''I'm in my fourth year at university and I'll be graduating next March. I've managed to land a job as a trainee newscaster in Nagano Prefecture, so perhaps one day you'll see me on TV.''If anyone else would like to join me, I'm getting up at 3.30 tomorrow morning to go and watch the sunrise.''Last night I pitched my tent in a park. I was woken by the sound of the morning exercise programme on NHK, and I ended up doing the exercises with an old guy who had brought his radio with him.''When I came to Wakkanai I only intended to stay for one day, but it's so much fun that I've already been here for three. I'll definitely leave tomorrow, though.'

At the end of the evening okah-san put down the mic, turned the lights back on and took a Polaroid photo of us all. Quite by coincidence, I now realised, I had found the same rider house that my friend Tokidoki Tokyo had stayed in on his tour of Hokkaido - also riding the Transeo 4.0 GT 7005 City Cross Design - the previous summer, and when I asked okah-san if I could have a look through the Midori-no-yu archives, I found his rosy-cheeked Devonian face among a similar group of guests from almost exactly a year before.

It rained all night and on into the morning, and not long after I set off there was a bolt of lightning and a crack of thunder, the drizzle turned to a deluge and I took refuge in this bus shelter.

During the next couple of hours the only person to join me was picked up ten minutes later by the only bus to pass by, and I wiled away the time sending emails to Mrs M, having a shave, studying Japanese, eating all of my emergency rations, and writing a list of every item of luggage I had with me to compare with a similar list from a previous tour (if you don't happen to be a cycling geek bordering on the obsessive then feel free to skip this next bit. Notations are as follows: L = lighter than previous tour / H = heavier / S = the same / N = new item).Bicycle – L (my trusty Transeo 4.0 GT 7005 City Cross Design, inherited from Tokidoki Tokyo)Tent – S (my trusty Snow Peak, which I've written about before)Foam mattress – L (on the last tour I took an inflatable one, which was a) unnecessarily heavy and b) got a puncture)T-shirts – H (I brought an extra t-shirt this time to reduce the likelihood of having to 'recycle' the ones I had already worn)Socks – H (ditto an extra pair or two, because wearing socks more than once can be even more offensive to the nostrils than doing so with a t-shirt)Shorts – L (perhaps my strictest concession to weight reduction was to remove the drawstrings from the waistbands of both of my pairs of shorts)Trousers – L (last time - cotton / this time - artificial fibres)Sun hat – L (ditto)Waterproofs – SRiding gloves – NBar ends – L (last time - stainless steel / this time - aluminium)Deodorant – S (Forever Living Aloe Evershield, which I can highly recommend)Dr Bonner's – S (see Day 12)Sleeping bag – SBooks – L (lighter in the sense that this tme I didn't bring any books at all, having realised that it's actually rather impractical - not to say dangerous - to read a book while riding a bicycle)Diary – L (last time - A5 / this time - A6)Hammer – S (for banging in tent pegs, in case you were wondering)Spare inner tube – STools – L (the wheels on the Transeo 4.0 GT 7005 City Cross Design were quick-release, thus dispensing with the need for a spanner)Pump – SLights – HWater bottle – NMapple – SMobile phone and charger – SDigital camera and charger – L (technology being what it is, the camera that I used on this tour weighed far fewer grammes and had many more megapixels than its predecessor)Electric shaver and charger – S (I felt very pleased with myself when I found the super-lightweight National / Panasonic ES8815 electric shaver on a trip to Akihabara, only to discover when I got home that it came with an inconveniently humungous charger)Bell – HMascot – N (see Day 1)Chopsticks – S (while waribashi - 割り箸 / disposable chopsticks - are marginally less prevalent in Japan than they used to be, I still saved the equivalent of a small sapling by refusing them in favour of my own, reusable pair)Spectacles – SBusiness cards – N (as I had come to realise these are an essential in Japan, where even bikers carry them)Mosquito coils – SBicycle lock - H Despite the anally retentive enjoyment of compiling this list, in the end I reasoned that the rain wasn't going to stop at any point before the end of the day, so wrapped my feet in plastic bags and rustled my way along the coast to Hamatonbetsu Town. That night I went to a restaurant-come-guest house that was buzzing with diners, who every few minutes would stand up in unison, rush outside and start applauding. They would then return with an exhausted-looking companion in tow, who would sit straight down and tuck in to his or her evening meal. Each one wore shorts and a vest with a number on it, and had, as they later explained, taken six days to run here from Cape Erimo in the far south-east of Hokkaido. For some, their 550-kilometre odyssey would reach its climax tomorrow at Cape Sohya, but for a hardy few, that would merely be the halfway point on a 1100km round-trip. There were a mixture of men and women, most in their fifties and sixties, and having covered almost eighty kilometres a day, every day for a week, they had begun to resemble each other: short, wiry, and so heavily tanned that at first I mistook them for a visiting delegation of native tribespeople from the Brazilian rainforest.

On an island of lengthily unpronounceable place names, this was the lengthiest and most unpronounceable I came across.

A little further up the road in the only marginally shorter and more pronounceable Otoineppu, I went for lunch at a busy soba restaurant, where the same young man was taking the orders, cooking the food, serving it to customers, doing the washing up and working the till.

'What do you recommend?' I asked when he arrived at my table (as it happens this was one of my most frequent Japanese utterances of the summer), to which the reply came in English.'Do you like natto?''Yes, I do.''Then you should try the tororo soba.''OK, I will. Do you mind me asking where you learned to speak English?''From my foreign girlfriend when I lived in Tokyo and Fukuoka.''Really? Was she American?''Ah, I had many foreign girlfriend! Where are you from?' 'I'm from England - have you ever been out with an English girl?' 'Not yet!'

So there you have it. If any female readers of this blog happen to find themselves in Otoineppu, may I suggest that you make your way to the local soba restaurant, where the manager / waiter / cook / dishwasher will give you a warm and multilingual welcome. Sadly I didn't think to take his photo, but he was, in so far as I am a good judge of these things, tall, dark, handsome and open to offers.

Just outside the restaurant I found this car - the lettering gaffer-taped to the bonnet reads 'Tokyo - Hokkaido'.

The dishevelled looking couple eating convenience store food in the front seat said that it took them twenty-four hours to make it the eight hundred or so kilometres to Hakodaté. 'We're taking it slowly now, though,' they said. 'Just driving around for a few days before we head back again.' Clearly not that slowly, as they were already another four hundred kilometres further north.

The forecast was for heavy rain, so in the coastal town of Esashi I checked in at a ryokan, where my room contained the first coin-operated television I had ever seen (one hour for a hundred yen), and where, more importantly, I would be able to use a washing machine. One of the other guests, a Mr Flower Field, introduced himself as I was transferring my clothes to the tumble dryer.'I studied English for ten years,' he said. 'It was my major at university, but you know what? I can hardly speak a word.' And he was right - when I challenged him to read the label on my bottle of Dr Bonner's, his pronunciation was terrible, and he almost invariably failed when trying recall an English word or phrase. 'I've been to Hawaii and Guam on holiday,' he explained, 'but of course, most of the people there speak Japanese for the benefit of the tourists, so I didn't get the chance to use any English.'

Mr Flower Field was in Esashi with a colleague of his for their 'side business', as he called it, importing ingredients for cosmetics from India, and suggested that we go to the local festival together. As far as I could tell from his description, this involved performing a dance to ward off ghosts and evil spirits, and was essentially a large-scale fancy dress party. As well as cartoon characters and celebrities, some of the costumes functioned as advertising for local businesses, so there was a cow promoting beef, a milk carton promoting, er, milk, a block of tofu, and even someone dressed up as a slate-grey block of kon-nyaku (devil's tongue - a flavourless jelly made from a type of potato).

Instead of kon-nyaku, Mr Flower Field treated me to a plastic glass of beer and a paper plate of chips, which we sat down to eat with disposable chopsticks at a folding table with a paper tablecloth. While neither of us wore a costume, Mr Flower Field claimed that people often mistook him for Prince Charles, although I'll leave you judge the credibility of this for yourself.

About me 私について

I suppose I must be the archetypal J-blogger - married to a native, working as an English teacher, still struggling with the language - and the main purpose of this blog is to give you an idea of what life is like for a multi-cultural couple in small-town Ibaraki.